I, Cartographer
One of the most popular posts on this blog was my copyright-unfriendly screenshotting of images of future Chicago from the movie I, Robot. I really loved the way the film layered future urban development into the current cityscape. I annotated some of the images and developed a map of where I thought the film’s main building, the U.S. Robotics headquarters, was located.
Well, turns out the special edition of the DVD just released contains a shot of a pre-production map (above) that the CGI team used when rendering Chicago 2035. I’ll leave the comparisons to those who care but suffice to say that I think they got the placement of USR HQ and Spoonerville wrong.
God help me if I am turning into the type of person who submits continuity errors to IMDB all day.
A long walk out of Africa
UPDATE: see Macro-Genealogy.
I’m just back from Canada (great trip, more soon) and my genographic data analysis is complete. The first finding is that I am, in fact, of the human species — a data point which generates almost limitless disbelief among acquaintances. Second, it is interesting that, well, it connects my genography to my actual genealogical line (the family I actually know about as opposed to my descendants 60,000 years back) and plops it right where I thought it’d be: southern Italy. I didn’t expect that kind of linkage.
My Y chromosome exhibits a genetic mutation known as M172 which makes me a member of haplogroup J2. M172 itself is related to a mutation called M168 which astonishingly can be traced to a single individual called “Eurasian Adam,” the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendants are the only line to survive after leaving Africa. But back to M172. This line heads out of east Africa to the Arabian peninsula, takes an incunabular pitstop in Mesopotamia, then treks west through Turkey, Albania, and into Italy. But what’s that fork across north Africa? And all the other forklets? Well that’s what this project hopes to figure out as it analyzes DNA from indigenous people around the world.
Oh boy. I got some reading to do.
See also: The Genographic Project
Where the sidewalk ends
Off the grid until next Thursday. I’ll be fishing in a lake with no roads in much less telecommunications infrastructure.
My normal travel gear has been stripped to a shell of its former glory: iPod, noise-cancelling headphones, iPod battery pack, digital camera, cellphone (won’t work, but gotta bring), and phone charger. My god, that kind of minimalism makes me shudder. Like a tech methadone clinic.
This will be good for me.
Corporate Lingo Watch
Got smacked with a new flavor of corporate metaphor this week. This is so meta it deserves a post-modern critique.
Guy is referring to a business deal that is taking longer than it should. The metaphor here is that it doesn’t have much energy. Running out of steam. Batteries are low. That kind of thing. What does he say? “This deal is low blood sugar.” After the split second what-did-he-say? I next wondered if there were any diabetics on the line.
Also, please do not use “uptick” and “downselect” in the same sentence. Makes me need to grab the desk to steady myself.
Sibling stance
In Ghana if a young child bends over to look through his or her legs it is a sign that the child’s mother will soon be pregnant. The bent-over youngster, according to West African tradition, is looking for a sibling. Interestingly, this idea must have currency in other cultures such as Louisiana French, because my wife’s grandmother also knows of it. My youngest son conks his head on the ground to look backwards all the time and whenever he does it sets off a flurry of giggling Twi, the dialect that our Ghanaian nanny and all her neighborhood pals speak. If translated I believe they would be saying: “job security”.
“A turbulent zone of near-nothingness”
No, not my marriage — which is nine-years-old today, hooray! — but rather a description of the edge of the solar system which the spacecraft Voyager I has finally reached. Launched when the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, this diehard explorer (and its twin) embody the best of NASA: trailblazing and science-oriented. If today’s NASA could regain that clarity of purpose we’d be so much better off than wondering how long we can keep a geriatric low-earth orbiting big rig from falling to pieces.
NASA
Voyager is truly alone now. Even the sun is just a pinprick of light. Here’s hoping someone — some thing — eventually encounters her golden cargo. Seeya, V’ger!
Idiot and the Odyssey
As I am getting on the elevator at work today a gaggle of dronish businessmen get off on my floor. Clearly they don’t work on the floor and are looking for a meeting. I hear one guy say “Odyssey. We’re looking for the Odyssey room. I wonder where that is.” Some other guy snickers “Next to the Caravan room, maybe.” Consensus chortling and I think even a ha-ha backslap ensue. I spend the elevator ride wondering what the hell he means. Some obscure Homeric allusion? Then it hits me. A minivan joke. The guy made a minivan joke, for the love of god.
Oh suburbia, is there any limit to the ways you enrich our culture?
The Complete Angler
My father and brother and I are headed to Canada with friends for our first fishing trip in over 15 years. Naturally, we had to restock our gear supply. So we visited the frighteningly expansive Bass Pro Shops in search of a craggy old fisherman who could help us find what we needed. We certainly found him: a leathery, nearly-toothless Vietnam vet who could speak in English for sentences on end without seemingly ever using a word I understood. (“Psst, Dad. Did he just say that the crawler harness behind the bottom bouncer might catch on the planer board? Right, OK, thought so. Good to know.”)
Who would have guessed that fishing line and condoms would be marketed so similarly? You have XL for extra long, smooth action and XT when extra toughness is required and of course there’s new-kid-on-the-block Sensation monofilament for “Greater Sensitivity, Strength, and Control.” Having Mr. Fishervet unironically explain the differences between the types of prophyl- er, fishing line made me feel slightly unclean, quite honestly. He didn’t particularly care for the condom analogy, either.
And because I know you’re wondering, we bought Sensation … for pleasure.
Younglings
Readers of this blog know how much my almost-4-year-old loves Star Wars. The kid is obsessed. He actually cried when I shut off the NPR review of the movie (because I didn’t want to know) after they played a snippet of the film’s fanfare. He might have been looking forward to Revenge of the Sith more than I was. Well, I saw it today with some co-workers, without my son. What an excellent coda to two atrocious movies. It almost made up for Jar Jar and the other awfulness. Somebody doctored the script because even Lucas’s dialogue was decent. And the threads tied up for Episode IV were perfectly done. (Check out the young version of Darth’s star destroyer general — Tarkin? Nice touch.)
I was so skeptical of the pre-release warnings about not taking young children to see this movie. My first movie memory is my father taking me to see the original in 1977 so I desperately wanted to do the same with my son. But it ain’t gonna happen. Most of the violence is the normal stylized swordplay, but not all of it. The emperor is scary; Anakin’s final moments gory; and the clincher (stop reading: spoiler comin’) is that the child Jedis are not spared.
I’ll wait for the DVD for my boy. That is, after I go see it by myself again.
International Freedom Center building design announced
The design for the International Freedom Center — the only above-ground building on the original parcel of land from the World Trade Center — was released to the public today. Given the flashy, contentious architecture of the Freedom Tower and a desire not to loom too prominently over the memorial pools, the IFC designs are fairly understated. The building is raised off the ground to permit lots of ground-level interacion and wandering. But what I love most is that the raised structure is the opposite of a building that falls down. It levitates, is ascending — an implicit counterpoint to the collapse of the towers.
Snøheta, the Norwegian design firm responsible for the Biblioteca Alexandrina (a true masterpiece), created the plans.
Full press release here.
Mission Elapsed Time: 20:00:21:06:42:40
I went back through it this blog (and my Flickr account) on its 20th anniversary, retracing digital footprints made on what feels like a different planet. Here are some highlights.
The Terror Tourist
A roughly monthly exploration of places in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from The Heavy Leather Horror Show.
Subscribe to the podcast or the email newsletter or just read through the archives posted here.
The Ampcamper
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
